Customs Officers discovered a million pound racket to smuggle cannabis from South Africa to the North East.

Drug runners set up a bogus company and rented an industrial unit as a base for the operation. They brought in shipments of cannabis hidden under industrial loads of land-fill gravel.

But after successfully smuggling &#xA3;750,000 worth of drugs in three separate consignments, the import ring was uncovered when a fourth delivery was intercepted at Tilbury docks in Essex, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Customs Officers found &#xA3;250,000 worth of cannabis. They seized the drugs then allowed the re-sealed container to be delivered to the gang's base on the Riverside Road Industrial Estate in Sunderland.

Two members of the gang, 41-year-old Stephen Vaughan, of City Road, Newcastle and Robert Anderson, 26, of Hudson Road, Sunderland admitted conspiracy to import cannabis between March 1998 and April 1999.

A third man, William Hellens, 44, of Mafeking Street, Pallion, Sunderland has gone on trial after denying the charge. The trial continues.